Beacon

Frustrated, Ink stepped outside to clear his head. His garden was quiet and peaceful behind the writing-cottage. The first moths of the evening began to appear. They fluttered like dusty ghosts in the twilight.

Then he saw something peculiar. One moth wasn't fluttering randomly. She was completely focused on a small, warm light. It glowed like a captured firefly, hanging in the air just ahead of her. The moth had pale, brownish wings and big, dark eyes. She was shuffling and fluttering in a determined line toward the glow. She would get so close, her little legs reaching out. But she never quite touched it. As she approached, the light would gently float just a little higher. The moth kept trying. The light kept drifting away. It was a slow, constant dance of almost-getting-there.

Ink watched this for a full minute, fascinated. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he said softly.

The moth paused her endless journey and turned her head. "Hello," she said. Her voice was small and dusty, like rustling leaves.

"You seem very determined to reach that light," Ink observed.

The moth nodded her tiny head. "Oh, yes. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember." She took another shuffling step toward the glow. "I am always walking toward it, but it is always just a little further." She sighed a tiny moth-sigh. "It's my purpose, I think. My name is Beacon. The light is my want."

Ink's eyes went wide. A jolt went through him, like a lightbulb turning on in his own head. This moth is the lesson! he thought. Her want wasn't some invisible idea he had to explain. It was right there, a floating ball of light! It was the engine powering her every single move. Her whole life was about reaching for it. And because she never quite reached it, she never stopped moving. If she caught it, her story would be over. The light moving away was what kept her engine running.

"This is incredible," Ink said. "May I please introduce you to my students?"

Beacon tilted her head. "I can't stop walking toward the light," she said. "But I suppose I can walk slowly in that direction." She gestured with a wing toward the cottage. "Your students can watch if they like."

And that's what she did. Beacon has been at the cottage ever since, always walking toward her small warm light. The light floats with her like a private little moon. Ink thinks it must be enchanted, but Beacon just accepts it as the way things are. Students see her in every lesson, shuffling across a bookshelf or fluttering past a window. She is always reaching. The light is always just out of her grasp. Her whole body is a picture of leaning forward.

Now, when Ink teaches his lesson, he just points. "This is Beacon," he says. "Her want is that warm light. Watch her for a second." The students watch as she slowly makes her way across a desk. "She is always moving toward it. That want is her motion." He taps his chest. "Without the want, she would just stop. With the want, she has a story. Every good character has a want like this. The want is the engine. The reaching is the story."

The students always get it now. They never forget Beacon. Long after they've forgotten the exact words of the lesson, they remember her. They remember that constant, hopeful leaning. It sticks in their minds. A character wants something. A character is always leaning toward it.

When students create their own characters, Ink asks a simple question. He gestures to Beacon. "What is your character's warm light?" he asks. "What is the one thing they are always walking toward? Find that first. Without it, you have no engine. With it, you have a story."